Its A Matter Of
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Its A Matter Of |
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(First Printed in Rage On! Magazine)
CLICK! You see it's all a matter of perspective. You'll have read my remarks in Rage On! about the tour. The band, crew and fans have made it happen together incredibly and I could continue to sing everyone's praises for probably most of the magazine. But before I get carried away, back to perspective. Judging by your letters (nearly two hundred since Christmas) I could easily edit a whole magazine on the subject of "What's wrong with the music industry in this country". The answer, my friends, is that the industry has always been wrong, it has never catered to the tastes of the population, preferring instead to make the population want to go out and listen to whatever the A & R men and the press say we should. In the times when rock music has been "good product" we all kept going to see the big shows at Wembley, Hammersmith etc. every couple of weeks, our local pub bands every few days and buying the records from every store or listening to the radio the rest of the time. We were complacent then I think. So now, with rock music suffering (perhaps because the bulk of musicians in this genre are older, wiser and therefore no longer the easily exploitable "products" they once were) the business is lavishing it's attentions and promotional budgets on what one of you (actually I think it was Malcolm Dome) described to me as "the cess pit of the over hyped and hopeless". Hard Rain have no illusions that mega-stardom as a rock band is harder to achieve now than say 15 years ago but the attitude that prevails, and which is reflected in the fans, is that "this is what we love, this is who we are and we will do it forever for no more reason than that". So that's why we haven't seen Tony's name on the writing credits for other peoples records or heard Bob's voice on adverts for bleach or something. And it's up to us to take our mark from them, to keep going to the gigs, writing to the radio request shows, buying the albums, talking about our music and, to coin a phrase, "Raging On".
CLICK! Perspective again, We've got great plans for the year ahead, many more gigs, hopefully as part of a longer and more far reaching tour (we've not even done all of Britain yet and we still have Germany and Scandinavia to do before we can even begin to reach out for uncharted territory like Japan and Australia). We want to keep our website, our info service and our fanzine expanding, we want to hear more of what you think, which gigs you like attending (OK, don't all keep screaming "Mansfield", we'll be sorting that out again later in the year), which songs you like on the albums etc. Tell us and we'll make it happen. There are already seven or eight songs written for the second album, wheels are moving in the industry and promotional and marketing plans are being discussed. We want '98 to be a new launchpad for Hard Rain and if it coincides with an upturn in the fortunes of rock music then so much the better. So the message is "let's do it together", if we're going to carry on bemoaning the state of affairs and scoffing at the latest transparent attempt to disguise talentlessness as music we might as well give in now. Bob, Tony, Sue, Rob, Al and Paul aren't giving in; Annie, Ollie, Melvyn and the road crew aren't giving in; blimey, even I'm not giving in so you needn't think we'll let you off the hook . . . oh, no! . . . you can all start by . .
CLICK! (This is my perspective cutting in here by the way) You've heard enough of my soap box rantings, what I want to say is this: I don't believe we get dreams without also getting the power to make them come true (that's a natural law of the universe by the way) so let's get our perspective goggles on, look to the future and sort out this beast we call the music business once and for all. Rage On might not be the world's most important publication but I'm telling you that we can make a difference if we overcome our apathy. So get writing, get talking, get playing and get going!
Here endeth today's lesson. Over and Out.
© Ashley Mortimer 1988
